"Augmented Reality is one of the most interesting and exciting tools emerging in the academic world today. Here are a handful of videos showing many fun, engaging ways in which educators and students are using it."

This is actually very beneficial to both students and teachers. There are always new and innovating ways to incorporate fun facts with academics. Not only is this new tool involving the both teachers and students, but it is also teaching and giving teachers and students new facts about interesting areas of education. This is something that has to be showcased around all districts.

On a cold winter night four or five months ago I started to organize the screencast videos that I've made over the years. I called the list Practical Ed Tech Tips. Since I started that list I've made an effort to add one or two new screencasts to it every week. Yesterday, I added the 100th video to the Practical Ed Tech Tips playlist.

In the playlist you will find videos about tools for flipping your classroom, videos on managing workflow, social media tips, search strategies, and media production. The entire playlist is embedded below.

We pair 10 photos from The Times that we’ve used in our weekly “What’s Going On in This Picture?” with ideas from students and teachers for how you can use them, or images like them, to teach close reading and visual thinking skills.

A great resource on the Internet, I remember when it began and they accepted my help as a translator. Now they have grown and keep on getting better and better. The best part: it's free for all, as long as you have an internet connection.

From the website: The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world. Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community.

I have not spent a ton of time playing around with this site but it looks good at first glance. Check it out!

Evernote just got even more useful for me with its new iOS app Scannable. In many of my past posts regarding Evernote, I have made it clear that the Evernote note taking application is my everyday "go-to" app in both my professional and personal life. With all the smartphone apps, desktops apps, and browser extensions, Evernote makes note taking and web curation simple and easy. Now, they've added an iOS app called Scannable. With this app, you can scan any document with your iPad or iPhone. You can then send it to someone by email, upload it to an Evernote notebook, place it in your photos, send it through the messaging app, or export it any number of your iCloud apps. It's rather simple interface is an added benefit.

Creating tutorials and explanatory guides is best done through the help of screenshots. These are pictures we take of our screens to share with others or include in a visual demonstration of how, for example, a process works. As teachers and educators we often find ourselves in need of such visual annotations and cues to enhance our students comprehensibility. There are several web tools that we can use to create screenshots and we have already reviewed some of them in past publications here. Today, we are introducing you to what we consider to be the best 4 web tools for creating screenshots. Besides being free, these tools are very simple to use and are also student friendly. They will allow you to capture your screen, crop and annotate your pictures using arrows, colours, shapes, text and many more.

Nothing hidden about these "tips & tricks" - just standard every day library functions. This is not new, most these functions have been used since Win95, the days before we see the net as we do now. Nonetheless, whatever it takes for people to finally catch up and educate themselves about easier searching techniques!

A couple of years ago I published a list of 21 online map creation tools. Since then some of those tools have gone offline and new tools have replaced them. Here's my updated list of online map creation tools for students and teachers.

Bloom’s Taxonomy was created in 1956 under the leadership of educational psychologist Dr Benjamin Bloom in order to promote higher forms of thinking in education, such as analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedures, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning). It is most often used when designing educational, training, and learning processes.

Bloom saw the original Taxonomy as more than a measurement tool. He believed it could serve as a:

common language about learning goals to facilitate communication across persons, subject matter, and grade levels; basis for determining for a particular course or curriculum the specific meaning of broad educational goals, such as those found in the currently prevalent national, state, and local standards; means for determining the congruence of educational objectives, activities, and assessments in a unit, course, or curriculum; and panorama of the range of educational possibilities against which the limited breadth and depth of any particular educational course or curriculum could be contrasted.

The original Taxonomy provided carefully developed definitions for each of the six major categories in the cognitive domain. The categories were Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. With the exception of Application, each of these was broken into subcategories. The categories were ordered from simple to complex and from concrete to abstract. Further, it was assumed that the original Taxonomy represented a cumulative hierarchy; that is, mastery of each simpler category was prerequisite to mastery of the next more complex one.

Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, and David Krathwohl revisited the cognitive domain in the mid-nineties and made some changes. This new taxonomy reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate. Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy improved the usability of it by using action words. The Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy Action Verbs infographic includes some action words that are useful in writing learning objectives.

Watching your favorite TV shows on Netflix and YouTube on your smartphone is great, but after a while looking down for so long can become tiring. If only there was an easy way to make your smartphone into your own movie theater… Well there is!

With just a cardboard box and magnifying glass, BuzzFeed explains how to make a homemade projector for smartphones that can turn any room into a theater. Genius!

Voice Record Pro is a professional voice recorder. It allows you to record voice memos and on-site sounds at unlimited length with configurable quality. Recorded voices are in standard AAC/MP4/M4A format. Voice Record Pro can record directly in MP4 (AAC), MP3 (MPEG) and WAV (PCM) formats plus convert function for all supported formats.

Over and over we present the case that a well-run library, exposing children to excellence in literature and information literacy will raise test scores. Better than that, it will prepare children for success in their future educational experiences.

Nothing hidden about these "tips & tricks" - just standard every day library functions. This is not new, most these functions have been used since Win95, the days before we see the net as we do now. Nonetheless, whatever it takes for people to finally catch up and educate themselves about easier searching techniques!

Are you looking for a safe and easy way to find images for school reports? Just search and download properly attributed, copyright free images.

G Rated Images - Photos for Class uses Flickr safe search, and we do a little filtering of our own to help it out - Read More Easy Attribution - When you click download, Photos For Class automatically cites the author and the image license terms - Read More Creative Common Images - All images shown are to the best of our (and Flickr's) knowledge Creative Commons licensed for school use

This morning I was thinking about the things that all young people should know how to do regardless of income, geographical location, life goals, etc. I started a list – see below. Some have “always” been true – some are unique to this century of learning. Let me know of any other universal skills you believe young people should know how to do.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.